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As 2024 ICAST Rolls into Orlando, Numbers Climb Toward 'Good Old Days'

The huge midsummer fishing tackle show opens this week to highlight the newest fishing gear.

As 2024 ICAST Rolls into Orlando, Numbers Climb Toward 'Good Old Days'
Lots of cameras, media and attendees, and loads of new products drew 13,500 people to the 2023 ICAST Show in Orlando. As the 67th edition of the fishing trade show rolls back into town this week, expect more of the same. (Photo by Lynn Burkhead)

Many are hoping “the good old days” are back this year for the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST) show in Orlando.

The 67th version of the popular midsummer show is scheduled July 16-19 at the Orange County Convention Center.

That sentiment about the good old days of ICAST actually came last summer as I roamed about the show floor, asking a few questions at each exhibitor booth I stopped in. One of those questions was simply how did the 2023 show compare to previous ones?

Multiple times last July, I heard that the show was a good one, and in some cases it was great as compared to previous visits, shows that rarely disappointed. And more than once in booths ranging from Strike King to Shimano to Simms, I heard someone compare last summer’s attendance, energy and positive vibe to the “…great ICAST shows in days of old.”

That got me to thinking a bit the other day, wondering if such words were simply immediacy bias as show attendees found reason to love the ICAST show again in the post-COVID era, a pandemic that shut the show down completely in 2020 and forced it into the virtual world.

Since then, it’s been a slow but steady climb upwards, although not everyone would recognize that trend. Because while some might pine for the good old days and remember crowds that once were, a look at the records (mostly post-ICAST recap press releases from the host American Sportfishing Association) show that last year’s approximately 13,500 attendees actually ranks as the fourth highest crowd total since 2004 (the last year from which ICAST records can readily be found).

In fact, the theme of ICAST last year was one of growth and continued recovery from the 2020 pandemic year show. After the unexpected year off—and a year after 12,000 attendees had visited the land of Mickey’s Magic Kingdom in 2019—some 10,000 folks returned to the ICAST Show reboot in 2021.

As exhibitors, buyers, media and others walked the show floor in 2021, the ICAST footprint was noticeably smaller with fewer booths, less traffic, lots of masks and hand-sanitizer stations, a new variant of the virus, and uncertainty everywhere. I’ll be honest and admit that when I left the OCCC exhibit floor that year on Friday’s final day, I wondered whether we all would return the following year, or ever again.

Well, return we did in July of 2022, and the show picked up steam in both attendance and vibe with some 12,000 people making their way to Orlando that summer. There was certainly more energy, less empty booth space, and it was a definite step in the right direction.

Last year, as ICAST welcomed the fly angling world back with an official presence—it’s worth noting that from 2013 to 2018, the ICAST show and the International Fly Tackle Dealers Show (IFTD) combined forces in Orlando—there were even more reasons to believe the show was recovering nicely as fly rods, fly reels , fly lines, and fly anglers once again had a presence at the mid-summer show just down the road from Disney World.

While not the highest number of attendees in show history, the 2023 show continued the upward trend of ICAST coming back strong, back into the “good old days” territory that many remember.

So how does last year’s figure of 13,500 attendees rank in the nearly seven decades of ICAST history? To gain an understanding of that, it might be good to take a glance backwards at the show’s history, long before the ICAST name was adopted in 1998.

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Back at the very beginning, the show was previously known as the AFTM (Associated Fishing Tackle Manufacturers) Fishing Tackle Trade Show. Held from July 27-30, 1958 at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago, the show for “…fishing tackle and closely allied lines” drew 136 exhibitors and some 2,500 attendees.

In the years that followed, as America’s sportfishing interest steadily grew in the direction of bass fishing—the founding of Ray Scott’s fledgling Bass Angler’s Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.) in 1967, the birth of the Bassmaster Classic in 1971, and the advent of tournament and TV superstars like Roland Martin, Bill Dance, Jimmy Houston, Hank Parker, Rick Clunn and more undoubtedly helped accelerate that move towards the bass fishing world and industry that we know today—the AFTM Fishing Tackle Trade Show continued to grow steadily and push ahead.

By the time the late 1990s had arrived, with the bass fishing industry rolling along strongly, the name change to ICAST occurred as noted above. The show was reaching new heights by then, continuing to steadily grow and push forward into the 21st century.

Add in even more fishing star power (Kevin VanDam, Ott Defoe, Mike Iaconelli, Edwin Evers, Skeet Reese, and more) and increasing television prowess in recent years—with networks like Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel , and World Fishing Network providing round the clock angling entertainment and education—and even more tournament organizations like the FLW Tour, Major League Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour and the fishing industry has likely never been stronger.

In this century, ICAST has surely seen accelerated growth, that upwards trend only being interrupted by venue changes, an economic downturn or two, the separation of ICAST/IFTD, and a global pandemic. Through it all, ICAST has weathered industry change and economic storms, a deadly malady and more, reaching good old day status within the past decade and returning to that level once again a year ago.

What has ICAST attendance looked like in the 21st century? Beginning two decades ago with some 6,500 attendees heading for the deserts’ summertime heat along the famed Las Vegas Strip, the number of people showing up has steadily increased over the years, including the following numbers: 2004 (6,500/Las Vegas), 2005 (6,500/Las Vegas), 2006 (7,000/Las Vegas), 2007 (7,000/Las Vegas), 2008 (7,000/Las Vegas), 2009 (7,400/Orlando), 2010 (7,200/Las Vegas), 2011 (6,900/Las Vegas), 2012 (9,000/Orlando), and 2013 (9,000/Las Vegas).

It's worth noting here that two things happened in the 2013/2014 time frame. One is that the ICAST show, primarily centered around bass fishing, other forms of freshwater fishing, saltwater fishing and the fishing lifestyle from a conventional tackle perspective joined forces with the IFTD show in 2013. While the IFTD footprint isn’t as large as the ICAST footprint, the marriage of the two shows and sponsoring organizations (ASA puts on ICAST and the American Fly Fishing Trade Association (AFFTA) certainly bolstered attendance for the next several years.

The other thing worth noting here is that beginning with the 2014 ICAST/IFTD show, the entire thing more or less moved to Orlando somewhat permanently since ICAST has been in the Land of Mickey Mouse for a decade now and will be there once more in mid-July in 2025 and 2026.

Once the move to Orlando was made and the ICAST show had joined forces with IFTD, the show blossomed to new heights attendance wise according to the ASA. In 2014, the show’s attendance reached approximately 11,000 people, followed by 12,000 a year later in 2015.

Then the cojoined ICAST/IFTD show hit is peak over the next three years, attracting approximately 15,000 attendees in 2016, 2017, and 2018 respectively. The last year of that trio of years, 2018, was the final summer that both ICAST and IFTD were held together. As best as I can tell, those three years are the high water marks in the show’s lengthy history spanning nearly 70 years now.

After the ICAST/IFTD split following the 2018 show, attendance dropped to approximately 12,000 for the 2019 ICAST show in Orlando. The show would have returned again to Orlando the following year in 2020, if not for the deadly pandemic that swept the globe.

As noted above, the return to an in-person ICAST trade show in July 2021 was filled with lower attendance (approximately 10,000), less exhibitors, and a steep decline in international visitors due to ongoing travel restrictions. Things improved a good bit by the 2022 show when approximately 12,0000 people attended and last year’s 13,500 attendance figure is actually the highwater mark for an ICAST show that doesn’t have the IFTD show on one side of the OCCC exhibit hall.

As the 2024 show returns to Orlando and the OCCC exhibit floor this week, what can the fishing world expect? From where I sit and the conclusions that I can draw from pre-show news releases and industry chatter, expect more of the same.

The crowds may not hit the highwater mark of the ICAST/IFTD years a decade ago, but they should once again be robust, and with a little luck, as good or better than they were a year ago in the summer of 2023.

And with lots of people excited about the sport of fishing, the industry of fishing, and the continued reemergence of the fly fishing world at ICAST, the energy should be high and the vibes good as the world of sport fishing gathers again in Central Florida.

And as long as the weather holds out—no hurricanes are on the map, thank goodness—expect plenty of smiles the next several days at the 2024 ICAST show because these really are, in fact, the good old days of ICAST.




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